At Moscow it is different; a candle is always necessary at midnight if one wished to read.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Rats eat corn and carry off more, kill whole broods of ducklings and chickens in a night, undermine buildings, stop drains, and unwittingly do much other injury to the well-being of the farmers and others.
— from Our Cats and All About Them Their Varieties, Habits, and Management; and for Show, the Standard of Excellence and Beauty; Described and Pictured by Harrison Weir

To press the points of her fingers at her bosom, looking up to the sky as she did, and cry: "I am not my own; I am his!" was instigation sufficient to make her heart leap up with all her body's blush to urge it to recklessness.
— from The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative by George Meredith

By nightfall all fighting south of the Thames had ceased, and victors and vanquished were fraternising as though they had never struck a blow at each other, for war is a matter of diplomacy and Court intrigue, and not of personal animosity.
— from The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror by George Chetwynd Griffith

Supper over, Jake "washed up," whilst Joe took a lantern and went off to milk the cows (which grazed free during the day and came in at night to their penned-up calves).
— from Saddle and Mocassin by Francis Francis

Then the servant tapped at the door and came in again, noiselessly as before, to whisper a name.
— from Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day by Walter Besant

“Oh, my Lord Duke,” answered Christian, “I am not one whom you can impose on by this species of courtly jargon.
— from Peveril of the Peak by Walter Scott

She would be well provided for henceforward, and would live in a handsome house; and all those noble qualities which had been dwarfed and crippled in a narrow sphere would now expand, and display themselves in unlooked-for grandeur.
— from John Marchmont's Legacy, Volume 1 (of 3) by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

Well, it would ill become me to investigate if there be nothing "rotten in the state of Denmark," and certainly I am not the man who could feel inclined to undervalue the divine power of liberty; to underrate the value of your democratic institutions, and the vitality of your glorious Union.
— from Select Speeches of Kossuth by Lajos Kossuth

"As a matter of fact, Sol," he said, "I ain't seen Brady in a month, y'understand, but supposing Brady should come across you in an oitermobile down at Coney Island at nine o'clock in the morning, y'understand.
— from Potash & Perlmutter: Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures by Montague Glass